3D Print
(Wikipedia)
3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to various processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object.
In 3D printing, successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object.
These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced from a 3D model or other electronic data source.
A 3D printer is a type of industrial robot.
Futurologists such as Jeremy Rifkin believe that 3D printing signals the beginning of a third industrial revolution,
succeeding the production line assembly that dominated manufacturing starting in the late 19th century.
Using the power of the Internet, it may eventually be possible to send a blueprint of any product to any place in the world
to be replicated by a 3D printer with "elemental inks" capable of being combined into any material substance of any desired form.
3D printing in the term's original sense refers to processes that sequentially deposit material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads.
More recently, the meaning of the term has expanded to encompass a wider variety of techniques such as extrusion and sintering-based processes.
Technical standards generally use the term additive manufacturing for this broader sense.
My 3D Printers: (in the sequence I accuired them)
My Cube 3
My Wanhao Duplicator 4S
My Micro M3D
My DaVinci mini
My FlashForge Finder
My Flux Delta+
My XYZ color
My FlashForge Adventure 3
General 3D print files
(Wikipedia)
STL (STereoLithography) is a file format native to the stereolithography CAD software created by 3D Systems.
STL has several after-the-fact backronyms such as "Standard Triangle Language" and "Standard Tessellation Language".
This file format is supported by many other software packages; it is widely used for rapid prototyping, 3D printing and computer-aided manufacturing.
STL files describe only the surface geometry of a three-dimensional object without any representation of color, texture or other common CAD model attributes.
The STL format specifies both ASCII and binary representations. Binary files are more common, since they are more compact.
An STL file describes a raw unstructured triangulated surface by the unit normal and vertices (ordered by the right-hand rule)
of the triangles using a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. STL coordinates must be positive numbers, there is no scale information,
and the units are arbitrary.
This picture showed a screen picture of an .stl file in the process of the Wanhao Replicator program, which may create G-code (and also .x3g files
native to the Wanhao Duplicator 4S).
G-code (also RS-274), which has many variants, is the common name for the most widely used numerical control (NC) programming language.
It is used mainly in computer-aided manufacturing to control automated machine tools. G-code is sometimes called G programming language,
not to be confused with LabVIEW's G programming language.
G-code is a language in which people tell computerized machine tools how to make something.
The "how" is defined by instructions on where to move, how fast to move, and what path to move.
The most common situation is that, within a machine tool, a cutting tool is moved according to these instructions through a toolpath
and cuts away material to leave only the finished workpiece.
The same concept also extends to noncutting tools such as forming or burnishing tools, photoplotting, additive methods such as 3D printing,
and measuring instruments.
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